Admittedly, Shaco's early game is very powerful, and by early game I mean first 3 levels/ first 2 ganks. However, if you do not shut down anyone on the opposing team, you cannot keep up, so if you fail in your first 2 ganks, have fun trying to amount to anything as Shaco. This leads to a very fickle based character where people think he is both OP and UP at the same time. I honestly do not mind nerfing his early game, in fact I would agree with you in nerfing his early game because it is fairly ridiculous.

With that said, lets weigh the pros and cons of Shaco:

Pros: -EXTREMELY good at ganking VERY early on in the game with Deceive and Two-Shiv combo
-Hard to stop if snowballed

Cons: -Besides it's use for jungling Jack in the Box serves almost no purpose due to its clunkiness and how easy it is to be killed when in team fights
-His clone does not simulate several key factors to make it very easy to pick out which Shaco is the real one
-The innate damage and AD scaling on Two-Shiv Poison is extremely low comparatively to any spell similar of its nature
-Backstab essentially only works on Deceive, a standstill auto attacking champion would be able to avoid it merely due to the position rotation embedded within the auto attacks

With this information in mind I want to get down to the very core of the abilities, and why I personally believe Shaco deserves a buff. Despite the different aspects of champions I am going to compare the abilities between different champions. In this case I will use Caitlyn as a point of reference since several of her abilities are very similar in nature to Shaco's.

Caitlyn's Passive vs Shaco's passive: Whereas Shaco POTENTIALLY can benefit from backstab on every hit (the only time this is truly ever plausible is a fleeing target, something pretty much everyone knows you shouldn't do vs a Shaco) Caitlyn has to get 8/7/6 consecutive hits to benefit for the extra damage off of hers. Now considering Caitlyn has an attack speed of 1.0 which quite frankly will be the minimum for the majority of the game, that means it takes 8/7/6 seconds to get her passive off. Now with Shaco the majority of the time you only get Backstab off of Deceive which has an 11 second cooldown, this means that Caitlyn not only gets her passive faster than Shaco, the damage is also in Caitlyn's favor having a 150% damage attack vs a 20% damage increase.

Caitlyn's 90 Caliber Net vs Shaco's Two-Shiv Poison: Although Caitlyn's net has a very similar style to Deceive (A position displacing ability/leap) I think there is a better comparison between the two stated above. So to get down to the numbers Caitlyn's net does 80/130/180/230/280 damage compared to Shaco's Two-Shiv doing 50/90/130/170/210, and comparatively the slow of Caitlyn's net is 50% at all levels for 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 seconds to Shaco's Two-Shiv providing 20/22.5/25/27.5/30% for 2 seconds at all levels this means that at every step of the way, Caitlyn's 90 Caliber Net has both more damage and a more effective slow than Shaco's Two-Shiv Poison. HOWEVER the scalings of the two do lean in Shaco's favor with a 1.0 ap and ad ratio scaling on Shaco's Two-Shiv Poison and a .8 ap ratio on Caitlyn's 90 Caliber Net, although I think it is fair to agree that both ap ratios on both abilities are moot and when comparing the overall ad ratios on the two champions "nuke" abilities caitlyn takes the cake having a 1.3 scaling on her Piltover Peacemaker. I know I brought my argument to Caitlyn's 90 Caliber Net, but since that is more of her escape mechanic than a damaging mechanic, a fairer way to truly compare damage output is comparing legitimate scalings (Although I would again like to note that Caitlyn's escape mechanic has more early game damage than 1/2 of Shaco's main ganking damage [Deceive/Two-Shiv combo] the most revered part of Shaco's gameplay).

Caitlyn's Yordle Snap Trap vs Shaco's Jack in the Box: having extremely similar aspects, Caitlyn's trap does 80/130/180/230/280 damage trapping the target in for 1.5 seconds at all levels, compared to Shaco's Jitb doing 35/50/65/80/95 damage per attack and fears them for .5/.75/1/1.25/1.5 seconds this means that unless the Jitb gets off 3 or 4 attacks (3 for earlier levels, 4 for later levels) on a champion, Caitlyn's trap will have done more damage AND CC'd the target for a longer period of time (other than level 5 Jitb) at all levels of both abilities. Caitlyn's trap limit is set at 3 and they have a 4 minute time period, Shaco's box has a 16 second cooldown, and a 60 second time period, which means he has a box limit of 4 (1 of those 4 will die in 5 seconds regardless of being activated or not). So it is fair to say in almost every aspect of the two traps, Caitlyn's is significantly more successful, especially since champion's do not receive gold for running onto Caitlyn's trap as opposed to receiving 10 gold for killing a box.

There really is no good comparison for Deceive/Hallucinate to anything in Caitlyn's arsenal other than the jump effects between Caitlyn's net and Shaco's Deceive. However the point I am trying to make is that Caitlyn offers more damage at all levels compared to Shaco, more CC at all levels (which will be even worse now with the slow nerf on Shaco's early game, I used pre-3.01 figures for Shaco's Two-Shiv Poison slow) and is a ranged champion, so what does Shaco have over her? a 3.5 second invisibility, that's it.

On another note, despite being a different champion I would like to compare Shaco's Hallucinate to Yorick's Omen of Death. Omen of death does 45/60/75% of the targeted champions damage while in ghost form compared to Hallucinate's 75% damage at all levels and takes 50% more damage, this means that a level 1 Omen of Death would lose against any level of Hallucinate and after that Omen of Death would take the cake, with A comparative 10 second duration on Omen of Death, Hallucinate has an 18 second duration, winning in that factor. However if an ally dies, the ghost is replaced by the ally for an additional 10 seconds leaning back in favor to Omen of Death. One might say that Hallucinate's explosion would be comparable to the temporary resurrection of an ally, but more often than not the ghost will be put on the ad carry, that means that an ad carry not using any abilities with 100 attack damage would need 3 auto attacks to equal the first level of Hallucinate 4.5 auto attacks for level two and 6 auto attacks for level three, and honestly it would not be hard to get that within 10 seconds, and by the time Hallucinate is level 2 or higher, the ad carry will have much more damage than 100. Granted Hallucinate explodes for AoE damage, but show me a game where Hallucinate honestly hits more than 1 target consistently.

If you have read to this point, thank you for reading through it all, or even if you skipped to this point thank you for even bothering to look at my post for a few seconds. Shaco has always been one of, if not my single favorite champions, and seeing him progress from being the most OP champion, to have a slew of nerfs to the point of where he is unusable is not something I like, he did deserve nerfs in the past, he doesn't now. League has been one of my favorite games but when I see something like this, even as minuscule as it is, it makes me slightly disappointed in Riot that they wouldn't look at simple math to find out that he isn't overpowered, or now even viable.
Sincerely,
A loyal and disappointed fan

CeeRob

01-31-2013 07:56 PM

I just think Shaco needs a buff, not a nerf. WHY THE **** DOES RIOT NERF ONE OF THE HARDEST CHAMPIONS TO USE IN THE GAME????????????????????

LastLaughLol

01-31-2013 08:34 PM

I understand their nerfs, they make sense, but they needed to also buff his late game, since they took away early game power. But instead they nerfed his mobility, and utility, with no buffs of any sort for late game.

Best Karma Ionia

01-31-2013 08:55 PM

What people dont understand about shaco is he NEEDS a good early game. You cant have an "Average" Shaco game. It's bad, or good. I just went 16-4-6 on him and did great BECAUSE I ganked top first and it was their duo vs our teemo. They had no jungle. Free double kill. Troll soraka mid was getting pushed by kat. Ran bot, killed her with ignite. Their cait just killed our corki and was near tower. Ran down, go a double kill and essentially an unofficial Ace and penta. GREAT. Now you're unstoppable and it's sad. However, if you can't get an early kill or gank, or you wait to long, or you don't gank soon enough or gank too much, you'll fall behind in gold xp and cs. Shaco isnt a character that can be shut down or left alone and come back lategame. You'll be the laughing stock of your team, doing hardly any damage and getting burned down like level 1 sona. If they're going to nerf his mobility which is his only REAL strong suit, as well as his utility which is his second. What does that leave him? His damage is god awful, and you can't do anything unless fed. Your mobility helped with that. Your teamfight abilities are awful. You deceive on the adc, ult and box and hope you dont die before killing their carry. You're best at peeling. He's much like Eve. Get fed, oh my god easily one of the most op champs. Get denied? You're worthless except for cleanups.

And it's so embarassing if you get shut down. I had a warwick tryhard warding my jungle and counter ganking me for the first 15 minutes. I was 4 levels behind the next lowest level, did about 120 damage [adc was at about 160] and couldnt even peel a god damn 20% Ezreal 1v1 with me at 100%. Why do people only look at champs one sided :<

Dehrios

02-01-2013 12:40 AM

I agree with most of this. It is very sad.....

Fluffy1

02-01-2013 05:56 AM

his passive works on two shiv too, but doesnt seem to apply to jitbs or clone explosion.